


The Pages All Are Torn And Frayed

by spockandawe



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, Emotions, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, Multi, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:41:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23141875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spockandawe/pseuds/spockandawe
Summary: You don’t have the best sense of time passing when you’re just a page from a book. It’s not like you have any external cues to keep you in the moment. You don’t get hungry. You don’t need to sleep. Even if you were just— left outside in the daylight, you don’t have a sense of it being hot or cold, and you can’t see it getting light or dark. Not unless you’re manifested. If you push it, you can listen and hear things happening around you, but that’s not much help, and it’s almost as exhausting as manifesting yourself in the first place.Point being, once you make the Archivist steal you from the Hunters, you try to stay patient. Maybe you should have laid down your conditions a little more explicitly than you did. You got the Archivist to promise to finish killing you, which is a step in the right direction. You got him to take you out of the book, to be sure he’d made a commitment to the idea. But you didn’t get him to promisewhenhe’d do it. You’d… hoped that he’d get back to his hotel or whatever that night, and take care of you then. You didn’t say it outright, but you thought you’d been clear enough. Honestly, after everything, you really, really shouldn’t have been so surprised when that didn’t happen.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Gerard Keay/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 12
Kudos: 75





	The Pages All Are Torn And Frayed

**Author's Note:**

> Like it says in the tags, this is eventual martin/gerard/jon, with eventual smut, but it's going to take a little while before I reach that point. The ship tag is staying in place, even though it's not really in the story yet, because it's the main premise of the fic. But the rating and this description will be updated as I reach the relevant content.

You don’t have the best sense of time passing when you’re just a page from a book. It’s not like you have any external cues to keep you in the moment. You don’t get hungry. You don’t need to sleep. Even if you were just— left outside in the daylight, you don’t have a sense of it being hot or cold, and you can’t see it getting light or dark. Not unless you’re manifested. If you push it, you can listen and hear things happening around you, but that’s not much help, and it’s almost as exhausting as manifesting yourself in the first place.

Point being, once you make the Archivist steal you from the Hunters, you try to stay patient. Maybe you should have laid down your conditions a little more explicitly than you did. You got the Archivist to promise to finish killing you, which is a step in the right direction. You got him to take you out of the book, to be sure he’d made a commitment to the idea. But you didn’t get him to promise _when_ he’d do it. You’d… hoped that he’d get back to his hotel or whatever that night, and take care of you then. You didn’t say it outright, but you thought you’d been clear enough. Honestly, after everything, you really, really shouldn’t have been so surprised when that didn’t happen.

But then, okay, you figured that he just wanted to be sure of getting back to London before he got rid of you. For insurance, in case the Hunters found him first. You can respect that. Still, _still._ Even when you’re just a page, you can tell when something is— touching you. It’s not an ideal situation, because when you’re touched, you’re either being pressed into a stack of other dead stooges, or it’s the Hunters ready to take you on another test drive. You felt something that was _hopefully_ the Archivist put you inside something that was _possibly_ a suitcase, and then after a while he unloaded you and then… nothing.

You passed a while trying to convince yourself that the deal wasn’t off, he just had— business, probably. Something important waiting for him back at the Institute. Gertrude had important things waiting for her all the time, back in the day. It’s just part of being the Archivist. Christ, some of the emergencies she brought you along for, you can understand this guy getting distracted for a day or five. Then, he’ll be back to burn you. Definitely. You mean, it shouldn’t be _easy_ to forget that you have a sheet of human skin sitting in your home, waiting for you to kill it.

Right, yeah. When you realize you genuinely have no idea how long he’s left you like this, you start pulling together the strength to manifest yourself.

It’s not as easy as it looks. Your mum did it all the time, but even she couldn’t sustain it for long, especially at first. And she had three whole pages to work from, as opposed to your one. You’ve never really had a reason _or_ a desire to experiment, but you’re sure that has to be a factor. Plus she was still attached to the book. You’ve got a decent idea of how _being_ manifested feels, after all the times the Hunters summoned you out for a chat, but choosing to do it yourself is different from having it yanked right out of you.

It hurts, first of all. Existing hurts, yeah, and you’re used to that. But this, metaphysically, is the difference between feeling binding threaded through your skin and tying you to the book, and making the deliberate, conscious effort to pull _against_ it. Not an instant of sharp agony, but a constant biting pain where you have to keep pulling against it or get sucked back down into the page. 

Anyways, you manage to manifest. In an empty, silent apartment. It’s just about as anticlimactic as it could have been. It’s not even an _interesting_ apartment. Your page is sitting in a drawer that’s just as plain and empty as the rest of the place. You wish you could even tell if it was the Archivist’s home, just, just to know whether he even held onto you himself, or if he passed you off to some other person and ignored the part where he _promised_ he’d finish killing you— 

You get it, honestly. You knew better than to _trust_ him, so you shouldn’t feel so betrayed now. You’re a valuable resource. In some ways, you’re even more valuable trapped as a sheet of skin than you were as an independent human being. Which is exactly _why_ you aren’t going to let yourself become anyone’s helpful little mystical encyclopedia. The moment you let anyone see you as useful, and not just as more trouble than you’re worth, you’ve screwed yourself out of any chance at a real death. 

Hell, you probably ruined things for yourself the moment you sat down for a friendly little chat about fear with the new Archivist. You should have known better. He might have seemed so _nonthreatening_ and _receptive…_ but that’s what being an Archivist is all about, isn’t it? You saw Gertrude at work often enough. You should have known that giving him anything more than a personal statement would have tempted him out of keeping his promise.

So you poke around for a while, trying to at least figure out if you’re in the Archivist’s flat or somewhere else. It’s probably his place. You’re hoping for— you don’t know, discarded junk mail addressed to Jon… something. Whatever his name was. No such luck. The place is fairly spartan, though the clothes look to be about the same size as the guy you talked to. The limited selection of personal possessions lying around seems to mostly be _books,_ which is honestly a significant clue in its own right, but it’s not enough to go by.

You don’t get long to rummage until the pain gets to be too much. Just a few minutes. You might not be bound to the book anymore, but it sure still feels like being dragged back in by binding hooked through your skin. It gets worse and worse, until it’s like a migraine headache in your soul and you finally give up and let your manifestation slip away.

Back as just a page, the ache fades, and you’re just left with a—ha—a _bone-deep_ exhaustion. You must be tired if that’s what’s making you laugh right now. But you don’t have much else available to lighten the mood. There’s nothing here but you and your thoughts. Nothing to distract you. Nothing else to do but slowly gather your strength for another try.

Next time you manage a manifestation, you go looking for matches. Or a lighter. Even a gas-top stove would suit you fine. No such luck. Of course. Of _course._ The Archivist might have offered you a cigarette, but no, _of course_ there’s nothing you could use to make a flame in his entire goddamn apartment. You… don’t think you quite have the nerve to put yourself into an oven. And even if you’re desperate, you don’t want to burn down the whole building. You’ve got no idea who else you might be killing if you did that. You don’t manage to make a complete search of the drawers before being physical starts hurting too badly for you to hold it any longer, so maybe you’ll turn something better up in the future, but you doubt it. 

Good thing you didn’t get your hopes up, because your luck sure doesn’t turn. Rummaging through someone else’s cabinets gets depressing fast, so eventually you head for the windows, see if you can figure out— anything. Just. Anything at all. The buildings around you are too tall for a proper view, but at least it looks like you could plausibly be in London. You don’t get much more than that. People down on the street are dressed in jackets, and occasionally scarves, but nothing heavier. Of course, that doesn’t tell you much of anything when you’ve got no idea how long ago it was that the Archivist promised to kill you. 

You try to make a point of checking the windows each time you manifest yourself, just to have _some_ measure of the passing time, but it doesn’t do you much good. You’re not sure whether you’re manifesting every day, _more_ than once a day, or if there are days you just spend as nothing more than a sheet of skin. It makes the whole experience more than a little surreal, in ways that might be more interesting if you were less increasingly certain that you’re stuck like this with no way to escape.

Fairly early on, you start toying with the idea of killing the Archivist. It’s— _‘Shameful’_ is a concept you left behind a long, long time ago, but it’s not like it’s something you’re proud of either. You wouldn’t have been ashamed of having a go at the Hunters, but it never would have worked with _them,_ so you never bothered. But the Archivist has you trapped just as completely as they did, and if he’s keeping you here as a tool, refusing to just let you _die,_ then— He’s crossed some ethical lines of his own, is your point. And if you have a way to break free, you need to take it.

So even though you haven’t seen anyone else in the flat even once, you keep an eye out. Someone’s paying rent on the place. It’s not cleaned out like someone was getting ready to leave. And when you think to check inside the fridge, there’s a small selection of produce quietly rotting away inside a drawer. The apples still seem mostly intact, but there’s something that might have once been strawberries, but now look mostly to be brown mush. It’s depressing to realize this is the best measure of time you’ve found so far. And the freezer is stuffed full of food. The place is empty now, but it isn’t necessarily deserted. Someone _might_ come back, and if they do, you need to be ready. You locate the Archivist’s knives, and make sure there’s one at the front of every kitchen drawer. Not _obviously_ something to be blamed on you if it’s found, but now there are weapons in locations you’re aware of that someone else won’t immediately see, ready for you to grab and use if you have to.

And at first— At first you have to wonder if your mind is playing tricks on you. _Hope_ can do cruel things to memory, you know that. You don’t _see_ anyone. But there are… little things around the apartment, things that aren’t out of place, but that you would have sworn aren’t where they used to be. The infuriating thing is that it’s never anything that you’d think would _matter,_ so you never know where to look. Are the pillows on the couch arranged differently from how they were the last time you had a body? Hell if you know, why would you have been paying attention? But, now that you _have_ been paying attention to the pillows, next time let’s have fun trying to remember exactly how the books on the side table were stacked.

You’re getting better and better at manifesting yourself—and trying not to think about how your mum must have gotten better over time too, and how if Gertrude hadn’t offered to help, maybe she would have reached a point where she _never_ had to leave—but no matter how you stretch yourself, you still can’t hold onto a physical form for as long as you want. It might hurt a little less than before (or you’re getting better at managing the pain), but it’s not long enough to keep any kind of decent watch. You still aren’t certain if anyone really has been in the apartment or if you’re just inventing things to keep yourself sane, but… it isn’t easy, but you give up on manifestations for a while. Instead, you just pour _all_ your energy into listening for someone else in the flat.

Fun story, you weren’t going crazy after all. You don’t know how long you listen for. Days, probably, without letting your focus drift. By the time something happens, you’re ready to drop from exhaustion, and it’s difficult to focus well enough to keep listening. But after so long with nothing to at all to hear, it’s as clear as day when someone opens the apartment door and walks inside.

Your first urge is to manifest yourself right away. And then, probably, grab the Archivist by the front of his shirt and drag him up off the ground and ask _why you still aren’t dead,_ but… too many ways for that to go wrong. You’re not manifested yet and you’ve already got a nice metaphysical headache, just from the effort of so much sustained listening, so you take a couple minutes to collect your strength and get ready to pull a body together. You keep listening, but after the door shuts, you don’t hear much of anything.

Right, no time like the present. The little side table with the drawer where the Archivist stored your page is near the apartment door, so that’s where you manifest. You’re braced for an immediate physical confrontation, but— Nothing. You can hear very faint noises from further into the flat, so you move, quietly, towards the main living area.

There’s someone sitting at the kitchen table. _Not_ the Archivist, which is simultaneously a relief and frustrating beyond words. You weren’t really looking forward to menacing someone with a knife, but at least if it was him… he knew where things stand. With you. You persuaded him— You _thought_ you persuaded him that it was for the best to kill you and get it done with. At a bare minimum, he _promised_ you he’d let you finish dying.

Whoever this is hasn’t noticed you yet, which is helpful for you, but doesn’t say much about his observational skills. He’s flipped on a few lights, but now he’s just sitting at the table, sifting aimlessly through a small pile of mail. Even once you stop trying to be quiet and wait a couple seconds to be noticed, you have to pointedly clear your throat before he jumps and drops the mail and finally _sees_ you.

You say, “So you’re not the Archivist, then.”

You don’t have long before you’ll lose hold of the manifestation, so you’re not going to dance around the issue. Might as well be blunt. ‘Course, then you get a better look at the guy and how red his eyes are, then see the way his face falls as he processes what you just said.

“No, I— No.” The words are very quiet. He’s looking you up and down, though. There’s not much power or intent behind it, but there’s something about the _way_ he does it that makes you certain he belongs to the Eye.

You try to keep your voice mild, at least until you know what’s going on. “Wouldn’t know where I can find him, would you?”

His voice is noticeably sharper when he says, “Why? He’s under… protection. By someone stronger than me. If you’re looking to finish the job.”

“Protection?”

The guy is glaring at you now. It’d be a little more intimidating if he didn’t look half dead on his feet. “If you want something from him, why don’t you go talk to Peter Lukas. And if you’re looking to, to— You might as well talk to Peter Lukas too, for that matter.”

“What the _hell,”_ you say, very slowly, “does _Peter Lukas_ have to do with the Institute?”

He laughs as if you said something funny. “That’s a— a good question.”

You weren’t exactly expecting this to be easy, but you really weren’t expecting things to get complicated quite this way. You don’t have time for this. Reluctantly, you set it to the side and shake your head. “Look, here’s the thing. The Archivist made a… promise. To me. I’m just trying to follow up on that. It’s something… important.”

“Oh.” The guy looks even more exhausted at that, and droops in his chair. “What did Jon do now?”

You hesitate. There’s only so much you want to share about this. You don’t exactly want more people knowing what you are and what you can be used for, not with how the whole post-death experience has gone for you so far. “What are you, to the Archivist?”

“I’m, um.” He laughs, in a sad, self-deprecating way. “I was his assistant. _Am_ his assistant. I mean.”

For a moment, you’re torn. But— you give up. The manifestation is a sharp, biting pain inside you, and you don’t know how much longer you can hold out. You turn on your heel and tell him, “Come here.”

He gets up and follows you back towards the door, and looks only vaguely concerned until you open the drawer on the side table and pull out… yourself, you suppose. It takes him a moment to catch on, until you unfold the sheet of skin and he really can tell what he’s looking at, but then he jerks backwards and goes pale, still staring at it. Or, technically, at you.

“Your Jon promised to kill me,” you say, keeping your voice carefully casual. “Back in America, actually. I’m not really sure how long ago that was. It’s a little hard to tell how time… passes, like this. The body you’re seeing right now? Not real. This page is all that’s left of me.” It’s disorienting as hell holding yourself like this, so you focus on folding the skin up and putting it down on the table before you drop it, or trip over your own feet, or lose the manifestation while you’re still holding it. You glance at the guy, who still seems like he’s in shock. “So. Got a light?”

He flinches at that, which isn’t a promising sign. He opens his mouth to say no, so you talk over him before he can get the words out.

 _“Existing_ is fairly agonizing like this, you know. I’m dead. And I’m not allowed to _be_ dead. I made a fair trade with your Archivist, offered him everything I knew about stopping the Unknowing… in exchange for him finishing me off. I’ve been waiting for much longer than I thought. I’m willing to take whatever opportunities present themselves. I would appreciate your assistance, in the Archivist’s place.”

“I, I—” He swallows hard. “I’m not… sure. Whether I’m comfortable—” 

You could just fucking scream. You think your best shot at making this work would be to rush him through it without letting him think about the decision, and he’s not going to let you do that. And you can’t even make your case properly now, because the pain of manifestation is beating at the inside of your head, pounding like the heartbeat you don’t have, and you can feel the page dragging at you, doing it’s best to pull you back down into it.

“I don’t have much longer here,” you say. Your voice is too desperate, but you can’t get it under control. “I can’t stay like this long. In a body. It isn’t how I’m _meant_ to be passing my time. This page… it’s me. And I want it to burn. More than anything else in the world, I want it to burn. If you set me free and I never wake up again, I promise that I don’t have the words to tell you how grateful I’d be.”

You can hear the last few words slur together as the manifestation slips completely out of your control, and then you’re gone. You’re a page again. If you had a real body, you’d be lying flat on your back, too winded to even move. The pain becomes less sharp and disperses into a complete and thorough ache instead. You wish you could scrape together the strength to listen to what’s happening around you, but you just— can’t right now. Besides, you never told the guy you could hear, when you’re just a book page, and even if he’s trying to _reason_ with you or something, you don’t have a way to argue back.

Still. It’s impossible to tell how fast time passes, but it hasn’t been long when you feel hands on you. For a moment, there’s a painful, razor-sharp flash of hope, but— no fire. You think you feel him refold you and tuck you away into the drawer, but the disappointment is so crushing that it’s difficult to think past it. After that, there’s only the same endless stretch of nothingness that you’ve gotten so used to.

As soon as you can, you manifest yourself again. You aren’t expecting the guy to be there, which is good, because he isn’t. But you also weren’t expecting him to leave a note, or a _watch,_ and he— did. He left both of those.

_Apologies for not introducing myself, I’m Martin Blackwood, archival assistant at the Magnus Institute. And if it’s not assuming too much… I think you must be Gerard Keay? Sorry if I got that wrong, it just seemed, you know, likely, once I got a chance to think about it. I didn’t burn you, which you can probably guess if you’re reading this, so I suppose I didn’t really need to write that down in the first place. I wasn’t able to help with that, but I will be back regularly to Jon’s flat for a while, so I thought I should maybe clear it up?_

_Oh, and you said you didn’t know how long it had been, so I left my watch, so you’d be able to tell. The date is in the bottom left corner, if you look. We met on the 27th, and I’m planning to be back on the 31st, around 7 PM or so. Hopefully that’s enough to go by._

_-Martin_

The watch display currently says that it’s the 28th, so you’re glad he added that last extra detail. You really shouldn’t be so moved by the presence of a _watch,_ of all things, but having something _here_ that can mark the passage of time in terms of days, not just hours— It removes enough unreality from the whole situation that it leaves you reeling. You get pathetically attached to that watch in just about no time flat.

And it gives you a way to _practice._ That time, you slip out of your manifestation before you’re so tired you don’t have a choice. You give it up on your own, wait a little while, and then try to build a body again. According to the watch, you were gone for less than an hour. You manage to dig up some scratch paper and a pen from the Archivist’s belongings and finally you have something to _do,_ so you start taking notes about when you’re manifesting yourself, and for how long. 

You’re doing better than you thought, overall. It’s hard to tell without pushing yourself to the absolute limit, but you don’t think you could have been losing days at a time, even at the very beginning. You think you’re improving, even in the brief window you have between visits. And, once it occurs to you, you start taking notes on how much time passes between manifestations, along with how long you _thought_ had passed between manifestations, before you checked the watch.

When the day comes for another visit from… Martin, you guess, you make some preparations. You leave yourself a good half day to rest up as a page and save your strength. But before that, you move the Archivist’s largest knife from the kitchen into the drawer with your page. Plus— You wrestle with yourself. But you don’t hide the watch. You hold it in your hand for a while, weighing your options. The idea of losing it isn’t as bad as it would have been at first, now that you have some idea how long you can spend manifested and how long it takes you to recover. But it still makes your stomach twist in an unpleasant way, thinking of being adrift again, without any way at all to mark the passing time.

In the end, you leave it out on the kitchen table, waiting for him, and let your manifestation slip away from you. You wait for seven o’clock as a page, in your drawer. You keep an ear out, and you wish you could tell if this is your mind playing tricks on you or not, but it _feels_ easier to listen than it was before. Both the manifesting and the listening, in some ways they feel like holding a weight out at arm’s length until you’re too tired and have to let it drop. If that’s right, it makes sense you’d get stronger over time. You just wish you had some way to know if you were right or if you’ve got it wrong entirely, and you’re just making up imaginary progress to keep yourself from completely losing it in the present.

You hear the door, eventually, at what seems like a plausible seven o’clock. You hear the door open, you hear it shut, and then there’s not much else besides a vague rustling. After a moment, you hear what’s-his-name, Martin, say, “Um… Hello?”

Sure, why not. You manifest yourself, standing right next to your side table. You didn’t really think through the physics of the whole situation, which means you wind up crowding Martin back into the corner. For just a moment, you see that he’s carrying an armful of papers and he’s got plastic bags hooked over his wrists before he jumps, startles backwards, and almost drops the lot.

He laughs self-consciously and apologizes as he recovers and edges past you, making his way to the kitchen table. He sighs heavily as he puts down everything he’s holding and turns to face you with a bright smile. Or, you get the idea it’s meant to be bright. Mostly he just looks exhausted. You still haven’t said a word, but you’re not really sure what you’re meant to say in a situation like this, and you were never that inclined towards social small talk.

He holds out a hand to you, still smiling. “Martin Blackwood. And, ah… you are Gerard, I hope? Or I suppose I look a bit silly, leaving a letter and everything.”

You clear your throat, and belatedly, reach out to shake his hand. You immediately regret it, but there’s no going back now. “Gerard, yeah. Gerard Keay.” For a moment, you hesitate, but what the hell, why not. “And how’d you know that? Did the Archivist tell you?”

His face does something painful to watch, and he turns away, rummaging aimlessly through the bags on the table. “Well, um. No. Actually.” You hear him exhale, slow and deliberate. His voice is brighter when he adds, “It’s actually all the research work in the archives. Your, ah— Your mother showed up in a few places. And so did you! In the statements we reviewed, I mean. I’m, you know, a research assistant and all, so I helped with some of the follow-up on those statements. A book with pages of human skin sticks ends up sticking with you, I suppose. It took me a few minutes to put the pieces together, but, well.”

Martin turns to look at you again, holding out an Indian takeaway container. “Anyways, I wasn’t sure if you’d need any— food? Like this. Even in the Institute, I guess there’s not much precedent for care and keeping of uh… ghost books.” He’s smiling weakly at you. “I hoped it wasn’t too urgent one way or another, since you’d been stranded here a while already. I meant to try to come over earlier this week, once I realized, but work has been a bit… much.”

You’ve barely spoken since he got here. You’re not bad at silence, but the longer he smiles at you, the more guilty you feel for not saying _something._ “No, it’s… I don’t think I _can_ eat anymore.” You pause for a moment, and add. “Sorry.”

“No, no, it’s—” He waves one hand at you. My mistake, should’ve… should’ve probably thought to ask, before.”

There’s a long, awkward hesitation as the two of you just look at each other, Martin still halfway holding the takeaway out to you. He blinks twice, slowly, like he’s lost his train of thought. He looks down at the food, then back up to you, and says, “Sorry, do you mind if I…? It’s only, I, I managed to miss breakfast and then lunch, and—” 

“No, yeah— It’s no problem,” you mumble. “No problem.”

Christ, you feel exhausted just watching him. He eats mechanically, like he’s barely even aware of what he puts in his mouth. And a significant part of you wonders whether he’s going to fall asleep there on the table. Still, he doesn’t collapse, even though you never really stop expecting him to. After a few minutes he turns to the stack of papers next to the takeaway bags, takes a pile of mail off the top, and starts sorting it one-handed as he keeps eating. You drift close enough to see that it’s all addressed to one Jonathan Sims.

Once Martin is finished with the mail, he goes to the other papers. But those— He picks the top one up, something in print too small for you to read without it being obvious that you’re looking. He pauses for a minute, staring at it, then puts it back down and shoves the whole stack of papers away. He puts the lid back on his food, puts the container in the bag, and turns to look at you again, smiling even more weakly than before.

“Right,” he says. “Yes. Okay. What can I do for you?”

“Where’s the Archivist?” you ask, nice and blunt, before you can let yourself start feeling too sorry for him.

Yeah, and you feel real properly guilty at the expression on his face once you ask that. Wonderful.

He takes a slow breath and looks down at his hands. “Jon is—” He stops, takes another breath, and starts again. “We stopped the Unknowing. Or, the others did. I was— You, you said you talked to Jon about that, right? And they did it. But a few of them—” 

You wait for him to keep going, but he seems to have stalled out. You have a sinking feeling about where this is headed, but you prompt, “Yeah?”

Martin says, “Jon is… in a coma. They’d—I’d—hoped he might wake up at first, but it’s, it’s been a few weeks now. If you want status updates, I’m, um, the legal next of kin. Apparently. I’m not sure whether it’s Elias who did that or Peter, though I suppose it doesn’t really matter, in the end. But I’m responsible for making the, the decisions on his treatment.” He reaches out to tap the pile of papers on the table. He looks up at you again, and you really, really wish he’d stop trying to smile. “So he’s— not available. Right now.”

You’d like it stated, for the record, that you aren’t _happy_ about being this pushy with someone who’s obviously… struggling. But you don’t exactly have many options available to you these days. You do your best to keep your voice mild and say, “If you’re dealing with the Archivist’s affairs, I’d appreciate your help in keeping his promise to me.”

Martin bites his lip. “Yes. About that.” He takes a deep breath. “I’ve, I’ve had some time to think about things, and— I don’t think I’m comfortable with it.”

You can’t help making a wordless noise of frustration as you turn away from him. It takes a moment to pull yourself under some sort of control, but it’s difficult to keep your voice level. “I don’t need you to participate, if that’s the problem. Leave me some matches and I’ll take care of it myself.”

“I, I’m not exactly comfortable enabling a _suicide_ either!”

“It’s not a _suicide,”_ you snap. “I’m already dead. I died of natural causes. I got dragged back. And now I’d like to return, permanently, to that state of existence.”

The silence behind you is too stubborn to give you any hope. You could just fucking _scream._ You’re not going to say anything else to make this easier for him, anything to help him convince himself he’s doing you a _kindness._

The only thing he says, after an uncomfortable pause, is a quiet, “I’m sorry.”

You don’t answer him. You’re not going to say a word until you know you’ve got yourself completely back under control. He knows how badly you want this, you’re not going to let him make you _beg._ From behind you, you hear him sigh, and then there’s a faint rustle of papers.

After a minute, you can’t resist pushing just a little harder. “Even though he promised, you can’t respect that?”

“Jon made—makes—all sorts of awful decisions, every day of his life,” Martin says, almost absently. “I’d be ashamed of myself if I only started disagreeing with him just now.”

That surprises a single laugh out of you, and you turn towards him. “Aren’t you supposed to be his assistant?”

“Yes, well. He’s the one who picked me out for the job, so there you go.” He’s… smiling. But the mix of emotions on his face is hard to watch, and you have to look away.

The silence is suffocating. Your eyes land on the watch, still sitting on the table, just past the jumble of bags, papers, and mail. Abruptly, for the sake of having something to say, you tell him, “You can have your watch back.”

You regret that almost immediately. If he’d asked for it, that would be one thing, but you didn’t have to _offer. Christ._

You sneak a glimpse at his face again, but he just blinks at you, bewildered. You point at the watch. It’s right there. Right next to his things. _Right there._

“Oh, I— yes.” He rubs one hand over his face. “I don’t need it. Did I mention? No, I suppose I wouldn’t have. Right.”

You’re starting to resent how this evening is a steady series of events tailor-made to make _you_ feel guilty for everything you do, even when it’s something like trying to give a guy back his personal belongings. Martin seems to have stopped talking, so just for the sake of clarity, you prompt, “You don’t need it?”

He makes a vague gesture in the direction of the watch. “No, no. I bought it when I was, you know, living in the Institute.”

“I don’t know, actually.” You’re trying not to get irritated. And you’re _not_ irritated, for the most part. But that doesn’t mean this is a coherent conversation, or an easy one to participate in. 

He blinks at you once, then smiles again, weakly. “Sorry. I, I had a spot of difficulty with Jane Prentiss, if you’ve heard of her? Or, the Flesh Hive?” He pauses just long enough for you to nod. “My home wasn’t really… safe anymore. So Jon let me live in the Institute for a few months, down in Document Storage. I couldn’t get much of a signal down there and it seemed like my phone was always dead or dying, so I bought myself a watch. I suppose I got in the habit of wearing it, but I don’t really need it anymore. And I thought you might, so.”

“Yeah,” you say. After an awkwardly long pause, you clear your throat and add, “And thanks. By the way.”

Martin’s smile gets a little wider. A little more genuine. His eyes still look halfway glazed over, though. And once he goes back to looking through the papers on the kitchen table, it isn’t long until he yawns, hard. Then yawns again. You lean against a wall and watch. You’re not really sure what else to say, and you’re starting to get a little sick of feeling _guilty_ over every contribution you make to the conversation. 

Still, you’re going to feel more guilty if he actually falls asleep sitting at the table, which is looking more and more likely by the minute. So you give up and say, “Do you have a bed you’re avoiding for some reason? Or is the chair really just that comfortable?”

To his credit, he catches on more quickly than he did with the watch. He’s probably got sleep on his mind himself. But he laughs once, softly, and says, “No, I’m just, just trying to be sure that the place looks lived-in while Jon’s— away. And, you know, things like picking up the mail and making sure all the bills are paid. But I’m trying to sit here for at least a little while every visit, to make sure anyone watching can see someone’s home. Don’t know how I’d handle it if the place got robbed while it was my responsibility, and all that.” He smiles, just a little. “It does make for long days, though.”

You clear your throat, feeling more than a little awkward. “I could help with that? If you wanted. As long as I’m around.”

It takes a moment for Martin to respond. And even then, all he says is, _“Oh.”_ His voice wobbles noticeably, just on that one syllable.

And you were wrong. You weren’t feeling awkward before. _Now_ you’re feeling properly awkward. You just… try not to look at him. You mumble, “It’s no trouble to me, turning some lights on and off, or whatever. If I’m here anyways.”

“I’d appreciate that, I really would, that’s—” Martin’s voice is just unsteady enough to keep you uncomfortable. But he is smiling in a way that’s much less… sad than most of the other ways he’s smiled so far, and you can’t bring yourself to cut him off. “Yes, even if it’s just working the lights, that would be a tremendous help. I’m still trying to get over to take care of things when I can, but even two nights a week has been pushing it, and just two nights a week barely looks _inhabited,_ you know?” 

He keeps going as he stacks up his papers again and collects up what’s left of the takeout. You can’t really think of anything to _say,_ so you just keep nodding—awkwardly—whenever it seems appropriate. He does hand the watch off to you directly instead of leaving it on the table, and it’s a cold weight in your hand as you watch him gather his things.

Martin finally picks everything up and heads for the door with you trailing along behind him, and half your mind is busy looking forward to just how hard you can collapse and _relax_ once he’s gone, so you almost run into him when he suddenly stops and turns to the side table.

“The skin,” he says, for no apparent reason. “Or, um. Your skin.”

You glance down at the table, but… you don’t know what he’s commenting on. Your page is tucked away nice and neat in its drawer. No good, leaving sheets of skin out where visitors might _see_ them. _Classic_ etiquette faux pas. 

It seems like Martin is waiting for you to say something, though, so you try, “Yeah?”

“Last time after you, er, disappeared, I folded it back up the way it had been, going by the creases, and put it back where it had been.”

He pauses, expectantly. You’re still just about as lost as before, so once more, you go with, “Yeah?”

“Well, that wasn’t— assuming too much, was it? Not too forward? I was just thinking, you know, that preserving old parchments is a pretty delicate thing, and leaving you out in kind of a, a _heap_ probably wouldn’t be the best in the long term, and I had no idea when you might be able to fix things up yourself. I don’t think folding is for the best, really, but I did stick to the original folds, at least. And you know, in the morning that window would have let the sunlight right in, and that’s not the best for ink. Not that this is that terribly pressing in the short term, but still, good habits and all.”

All you can do for a moment is blink, more than a little off-balance. Though, you realize, he specified _ink—_ “You read it, then?” you say, keeping your voice mild.

“Ah—” He hesitates, and you can see him twisting his fingers back and forth in the handles of the plastic bags. “I, well. I started to, without really _thinking_ about it. I only got a sentence or two in, honest, before I realized it was… personal?”

“Private,” you say, still nice and calm.

“Right, yes.” His ears have gone pink. “So I— I’d figured I’d already taken enough liberties, and it was better to stop late than never."

"It doesn't matter," you say, because honestly? It doesn't. And this is probably the one person ever who's gotten a look at what's left of you and hasn't paused to read the whole stupid story. You're not going to invite him to sit down and read the rest of it, but you're also not going to kick up a fuss when you can't even manage to feel properly bothered about it. Martin still looks uncertain though, so more firmly, you repeat, "It doesn't matter."

He sighs and says, "If you say so. But really, I am sorry about that— Oh, and before I go, here, let me give you some advice on storing your, ah, skin. We keep some really old items at the Institute, and that's where I started out before Jon picked me to work with him. Some of it really gets into conservation work, and of course we try not to hire people from outside if we can help it. It sticks with you, honestly, and it seems like a shame not to pass it along."

So that's another ten minutes right there as you nod politely along and give up on retaining more than a few more snippets of information. Direct sunlight is bad, being stored flat is better than folded, temperature control, _humidity_ control— It's a lot, delivered very quickly, and you were already wanting the flat to yourself before he took this little detour. Still by the end, he's looking much more awake and excited than he's been the whole rest of the visit. Maybe he won't pass out on the train before he gets wherever his home is. You make vague promises about properly taking care of… yourself as you finally herd him out into the hallway and _finally_ shut the door behind him.

So, it's embarrassing. It's infuriating as hell. And you're so fucking done with yourself when you realize. But you decide, why not, let's follow one of these conservation tips now, so you remember to get it done before he visits again (and safely forget about the rest of it). You settle on moving your page to somewhere it'll fit and lie flat without being folded. You open the drawer. And you see the knife.

And that, _that_ is the moment when you finally remember that the point of this exercise isn't to waste time conserving what's left of your carcass. You're supposed to be convincing Martin to let you peacefully die. That's all you want. That's why you made a point of getting ready to threaten him into helping you. Learning parchment conservation techniques is incredibly close to being the perfect opposite of what you wanted from this visit. _Chrissake_.

Anyways, you still move your page, though you're fuming the whole time. You’re too angry to get anything else done, not that you even have anything else to do, and it doesn’t help matters that you’re more angry with yourself than with anyone else. You don’t let yourself think about how you’re taking Martin’s advice, when, if anyone would just _listen to you,_ this wouldn’t _matter_ in the first place.

But you tell yourself that you’ve got other reasons for moving yourself. And you do. The main hallway isn't bad for a listening post, but there's generally nobody to listen to, and you're uncomfortably exposed. If anyone shows up looking to wreck the Archivist’s place, or looking for you— Fuck, that’s an even worse thought. The longer it takes you to find someone to let you die, the more likely it becomes that the Hunters will miss you, and you genuinely don’t know if they’ll be so pissed they come looking for you themselves.

After an hour of walking restless, useless circles through Jon’s flat, you settle on his bedroom dresser as a decent location to store your page, and shove things around until you've emptied out an entire drawer for yourself. You lay out the skin, nice and flat, because you wouldn't want to hurt your chances at a _long, happy life,_ would you, that would be such a _shame._

And before you discorporate yourself for the evening, you go get the knife. You put that in the drawer too. You’re not forgetting it next time.


End file.
